Production Jewelry 1: Design

Many of our students dream about making a living by selling their jewelry. It sounds wonderful, but getting from making jewelry to making a living can feel intimidating. Jenn Parnell is here to help you make the leap from hobbyist to professional with lots of info, tips and guidance.

This 2 part course with Jenn Parnell is a great way to learn what you need to know to design a jewelry line, how to start up your business and how to promote your work with marketing.

The 8 week Production Jewelry 1: Design course covers how to design, fabricate, and finish a line of production jewelry based on your previous work and inspiration. Class starts with concept, prototyping and design considerations, and then moves into methods of reproducing pieces, and production finishing techniques, as well as utilizing commercial findings and mechanisms. This class covers a wide range of topics for any jeweler.

Production Jewelry 2: Business and Marketing meets weekly and covers a lot of the business and marketing aspects that are important for a small business artist to understand in order to be successful, like pricing your work, how to get your work out into the world, photography, social media, and website development.

You can take these 2 courses in any order as they suit your needs and schedule.

Production Jewelry 1: Design teaches the following:• What is production jewelry?
• How does production jewelry meet your artistic, financial and life goals?
• Designing a line with sketches and making a maquette
• Prototyping and creating originals for your line
• One-on-one design review and help
• Methods for reproduction
• Calculating best price points for your line
• How to make and use molds to help with production
• Outsourcing some of your production including casting, laser cutting, 3D printing, and other services
• Integrating and adjusting commercial findings for your line (like posts, clasps, chain, settings, etc.) into your line
• Mass finishing techniques to speed up polishing
• How to keep growing your line and keep it fresh with new designs and variations

Price includes materials and use of tools.Each student has their own assigned jewelry bench and a complete set of tools to use during class. Base metal is included for making prototypes, but students may need to purchase stones, findings and additional metal, if they would like to work in precious metals, like sterling, or add stones, settings, chain, etc to their designs.

This class includes making prototypes for your line, so students must have previous experience making jewelry, like Basic Jewelry 1 or Basic Jewelry 1 & 2, Lost Wax Casting 1, or Enameling 1, etc. Previous experience with techniques (sawing, filing, sanding, soldering and polishing) is recommended.